by Nancy Moser
The second shadow that hung over us was twofold. Two miscarriages. In Pisa, I had not believed I was pregnant even when I had felt unwell and had felt pains. Wilson had suggested it was so, and if it were so, that the pain was not normal. She had also suggested that the opium I still took at that time could not be good for the baby. But I was so stupid and so enmeshed with the drama of what we had just accomplished with our marriage that I was in denial. Until seven weeks later—five months into a pregnancy—I miscarried. Dr. Cook was blunt in stating that if he had been called six weeks prior, everything would have gone as right as possible.
And then I suffered a second miscarriage last fall, when I was only two months along. I nearly died. I could not help but be bitter to think that if I had died, Robert would not have been able to contact the men of my family.
“Ba, you’re not eating.” Robert put a piece of fish on my plate. “Eat it and be strong. I thought we’d go for a walk this afternoon. If you have the time . . .”
Time. Yes. It was time. Time for joy.
“I don’t feel like eating much right now,” I said. “I have been a little queasy of late.”
His face instantly mirrored his concern. “You’ve been without appetite for a good two months. And yet you continue to say you are well? I don’t understand.”
I looked at Wilson and held her gaze a long moment. Suddenly, her eyebrows lifted. In response I offered her the slightest of nods. She smiled, then rose from the table. “If you’ll excuse me?”
Robert called after her, “But, Wilson, you didn’t finish your meal.” To me he said, “If she doesn’t return, I will eat her portion of the cheesecake, I swear I will.”
“You may have my portion too, dearest.”
He sat back in his chair and tossed his napkin on the table. “Now I know you are not well. Should I call the doctor?”
“Not yet,” I said. “But I will let you call him in seven months or so.”
“Seven . . . ?” His eyes widened. “No. Really? Are you . . . ?”
“I am.”
He nearly knocked his chair over as he rushed to my side, knelt on the floor, and took me into his arms.
I kissed the top of his head. “I will be more careful this time, dearest. I will even relinquish my opium for the duration. Just in case. I am not a young woman. I am forty-two . . .” I took his face in mine. “I will do anything and everything to have this child—a healthy child.”
So help me God.
The heat was unbearable. Although Florence was our chosen city, and although we called her home, in the summer the Arno nearly steamed with heat. And so we fled to the countryside, searching for relief by heading towards the Adriatic Sea.
Murray’s Handbook for Travellers suggested Fano, outside of Ancona, would be an acceptable summer residence. . . .
I stood to the side of the window, clad only in my petticoats, fanning myself. “How can there be so much heat? The world will surely turn into a fireball.”
Robert was also dressed—or undressed—to his trousers and shirt. “Do come away from the window, Ba. Someone might see you.”
I knew he was right, but the need for air . . . I did not much care if the waiter saw me dressed so. The heat had made me demoralized out of all sense of female vanity, not to say decency.
“It is this hotel. Let us go to the church again, where it is cool,” he said.
I stopped fanning a moment. “This is the third time you’ve wanted to go to San Agostino in as many days.”
He shrugged, but I saw him gather his notebook and a pencil.
“It’s the angel you wish to visit, yes?”
He took a penknife and began to sharpen his pencil over a newspaper. “It is the first time I have felt inspired to write since our marriage, Ba. I cannot waste this muse.”
I nodded and reluctantly gathered my dress.
I knew Robert was disappointed in his lack of writing output. When we had first discussed marriage, our desire was to get away, where we could both create new works. And I had succeeded—to a point. I had recently sent a poem called “The Runaway Slave” to America, and had completed a portion of a new poem called “Casa Guidi Windows.” I was also working on a new edition of my previous work—as was Robert, to a lesser degree. He had been editing but not creating anything new. His parents had believed in his writing so much that they had never required him to work otherwise. With my brother’s mean comments about Robert marrying me for my money . . . I wished for him to feel the fulfillment of fresh creation—and subsequent income.
The painting of the angel, above the altar, that so inspired him was by Guercino. It had enormous outstretched wings and was touching a young child who knelt with prayer-clasped hands. The angel seemed to be teaching him how to pray by looking towards heaven. Perhaps the statue was filling a need in my husband beyond literary inspiration?
Once we were dressed we went to the church. Robert walked faster than usual, and I had trouble keeping up with him, but I did not hold him back. I was pleased at his urgency. I understood it, for when inspired one does not amble, one runs towards the source.
It took a moment for our eyes to adjust from the bright sunshine to the darkness of the church, but I embraced its chill. I let go of Robert’s arm, allowing him to step forward towards the altar. His head was high, his eyes straight ahead, focused on the painting.
I also moved forward, taking a place on a chair near a side aisle. Robert stood directly in front of the altar, enrapt. I studied the painting while he did, wanting to see what he saw, feel what he felt.
The child, of about three, on its knees, hands clasped, made me yearn for our own child. Would it be born healthy? Would we have the chance to teach him or her to pray? My arms nearly ached with the thought of holding a child. I bowed my head. Please, Father. Bring our child safely into this world.
I heard Robert’s feet upon the stone floor. He backed to a chair and placed his notebook on his lap. After only a moment’s hesitation, his pencil flew across the page. To witness the full cycle of inspiration, from an ungraspable thought to a formation of words, to their declaration upon a page . . . my heart swelled with gratitude for this man, this vocation we shared, and this moment in this sixteenth-century church. How I wished I could speak with the artist Guercino and let him know that his work had completed its mission of touching another heart and mind. For what more did any mortal want?
How I wished to stand behind Robert and watch the words flow upon the page. But I dared not move and break the tenuous thread that connected my husband and the angel. He was always patient with me and so I would return the favour.
I do not know how much time passed, as my own thoughts traversed from here to there, from prayer to the corporeal. But suddenly, Robert slapped his notebook shut and stood. Only then did he look around for me, as though forgetting I had accompanied him.
“Ba.”
“Robert.”
He extended his arm to me. “Shall we go?”
“You are finished?”
He patted his notebook, the glow of satisfaction on his face. “I am.”
“May I read it?”
He seemed taken aback.
I put a hand upon his. “It’s fine. I don’t need—”
“No,” he said. “I will read it to you. At least in part.” He offered me a chair and stood before me. He opened the notebook and held it towards the dimming light:
“Dear and great Angel, wouldst thou only leave
That child, when thou hast done with him, for me!
Let me sit all the day here, that when eve
Shall find performed thy special ministry,
And time come for departure, thou, suspending
Thy flight, mayst see another child for tending,
Another still, to quiet and retrieve.
“Then I shall feel thee step one step, no more,
From where thou standest now, to where I gaze,
And suddenly my head is covered o’er
> With those wings, white above the child who prays
Now on that tomb—and I shall feel thee guarding
Me, out of all the world; for me, discarding
Yon heaven thy home, that waits and opes its door.
“I would not look up thither past thy head
Because the door opes, like that child, I know,
For I should have thy gracious face instead,
Thou bird of God! And wilt thou bend me low
Like him, and lay, like his, my hands together,
And lift them up to pray, and gently tether
Me, as thy lamb there, with thy garment’s spread?
“If this was ever granted, I would rest
My head beneath thine, while thy healing hands
Close-covered both my eyes beside thy breast,
Pressing the brain, which too much thought expands,
Back to its proper size again, and smoothing
Distortion down till every nerve had soothing,
And all lay quiet, happy and suppressed.
“How soon all worldly wrong would be repaired!
I think how I should view the earth and skies
And sea, when once again my brow was bared
After thy healing, with such different eyes.
O world, as God has made it! All is beauty:
And knowing this, is love, and love is duty.
What further may be sought for or declared?”
He closed the book and took it to his chest. I hated to break the moment with a word, but I knew he wished for one. “It is beautiful. I hear your voice in every line. There is such comfort there, with the angel coming down to minister to you, to offer you relief from the burdens of the world.” My eyes filled with tears. “I am sorry to have created so many burdens for you. If I could relieve them like this angel, I—”
He sat beside me, his knees touching mine. “Do not say such things, Ba. That our path was hard does not mean it was not also right, nor that it is not paved with blessings. ‘For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.’ We have been given so much, Ba. And writing again . . . it is the more I wish to give back.”
As always, our hearts and minds meshed with communal agreement. God was good to send an angel to minister to my husband.
I would seek to add my own comfort to the lot.
If it were possible to will oneself to be well, so it was during my confinement. I desired no company besides Robert and Wilson, and ordered white muslin from England to make curtains for my bed. Robert found a lovely chest of drawers to sit nearby made of walnut with ivory inlays. It was indeed a room fit to wait upon a birth.
A box of my belongings arrived from England, including a portrait of my father. I trembled to look at the dear face again, and yet I had it placed so I looked upon him first thing at waking and last thing at night.
“Why do you distress yourself so?” Robert had asked, with Wilson chiming in with similar words.
And though I tried to express why, I found there was no answer—none that could be expressed through logic. Although I was eminently happy in Florence and in my marriage to Robert, the desire to reconcile with Papa was a constant pang within my heart. Did he know I was having his grandchild? Did he care? My sisters had sent me various baby clothes they had made with their loving hands, but they refrained from mentioning Papa, even when I specifically asked. My letters to Papa, my eager hands outstretched across the miles, were never answered. Were they read? Again, such questions asked of my sisters received no response.
I was not certain which alternative suited me better—that Papa read my letters and did not respond, or never read them at all because he had deemed me dead to him. Either way, his silence was a pall upon my happiness.
I sat in my sitting room and hand-stitched a baby gown. I had never considered myself good at needlework, but found a curious talent in it at this late date in my womanhood. When Wilson commented on the excellence of the stitches, I teased that this was my new profession. Poetry would hereby be abandoned.
Actually . . . in my husband’s case that was far too accurate. Although I had been encouraged by his poem about the angel at Fano, he had created nothing since. But more worrisome was his acquiescence towards the condition. “I am fine, Ba. When it’s time to write, I will write. Have no worries.”
But I did have worries. When he had lived at home with his parents, writing had consumed him. His parents had encouraged his focused application, taking care of all the concerns of daily living. But now, living with me . . . Robert was forced to attend to the responsibilities that had heretofore been embraced by others.
It was my fault. Would the literary world blame me for silencing a great poet? When in the mood, Robert could create prodigiously—as could I. But he was so rarely in the mood. . . .
Wilson entered, her face beaming. She carried something pink. “Here it is,” she said. “The lining for the cradle. For our darling girl. And in honour of your birthday today.”
I ignored the mention of my day. I did not make much of birthdays—unless it was the birth day of my child. “Girl?” I asked.
She tucked it into the wicker cradle and added a pink pillow. “Of course.”
“How do you know it’s a girl?”
“I . . .” She stood upright and cocked her head. “You are such a slight woman I just assumed . . .”
Ah. In truth, I’d also had the notion that I would have a girl because of my small stature. Surely someone like me could not give birth to a robust boy. I was not afraid of the pain—I had suffered pain before, and with birth, knowing the blessing of the outcome . . .
But I did wish for it to begin soon. That would be the best birthday greeting.
Hello, dear child, please come and meet us. . . .
Robert sat by my bedside. Another pain began low in my back, and I gripped his hand hard as the pain grabbed me in its vise and squeezed.
“Ba! Cry out! Do not hold yourself in control on my account. I would rather you scream and cry than expend your energy being strong.”
I could not answer him, as I had to concentrate on breathing through the agony. I shook my head at his words, and once the pain had released me, I said, “I do not cry out because I feel no need to do so. The pain is intense but does not control me. I am strong enough.”
An Italian nurse was getting towels at the ready while Dr. Harding stood on the other side of the bed and nodded. “Indeed you are, Mrs. Browning. In fact, in all my practice I have never seen the functions of nature more healthfully performed.”
“See?” I said to Robert.
Robert took out his pocket watch. “But it has been twenty hours. How can anyone endure such—”
Another contraction gripped me, more intense than the last. They were coming more frequently now, and the desire to push was demanding.
Dr. Harding pointed to the door. “Out, Robert. The timing is close now. It will not be long. You must leave us.”
I saw the battle in my husband’s eyes. He wished to stay by my side, but also, desperately, wished to distance himself from the pain. I gave him leave. “Go. I am in capable hands—both Dr. Harding’s and the Almighty’s.”
Robert kissed me. “I adore you. May God keep you safe, dear Ba.” I closed my eyes and said my own prayer. And then another pain came upon me and I was forced to trust. Completely.
The baby cried out. A lusty cry, full of life.
“It’s a boy!” Dr. Harding proclaimed.
“A boy?” I gave birth to a boy?
I tried to see him, but the doctor and the nurse were busy, with the baby between them.
Sudden fears flooded over me. “Is he all right? Is he healthy?”
A few more moments passed before Dr. Harding turned to face me. He smiled. “He is a fine specimen. Perfect in every way.”
I, who was a good deal tired and exhausted, rose up suddenly in my spirits to a sort of
ecstasy. I not only forgot the pain but I slapped my hands and clasped them together. “Praise God!”
The tears that had been held at bay during the labour now demanded release. I extended my arms to my child. My hands ached for his touch, my arms trembled with anticipation.
Upon our first touch, I was in love and unspeakable rapture. His face was oval—like mine—and his skin was pink with health. I put my finger against his hand and he took it with strength. He tried to open his eyes and I wondered what he thought about his first glance of his mama.
“Hello, dear one. I have waited a lifetime for you.” I gently kissed his head.
Suddenly, Robert burst through the doors. “Ba?”
He ran to my side, his eyes on me, and then . . .
He too saw the child and I saw the love in his eyes.
“It’s a boy,” I said. “A healthy boy.”
“May I hold him?” he asked.
I happily relinquished our son to his father. Robert made soft cooing sounds and rocked him as if he had owned this ability his entire life.
And perhaps he had. For I had just fulfilled the highest natural function of a woman. Was it any less miraculous that my husband—rocking his child and loving him with unconditional love—was fulfilling the highest natural function of a man?
My world was now complete.
SEVENTEEN
“I do like a man who is not ashamed to be near a cradle.”
Robert did not look up to accept my compliment but continued to gaze upon our son: Robert Wiedeman Barrett Browning. Pen for short.
He picked the boy up and settled him into his arms. I could not hear what soft words he said and did not need to. I found myself the opposite of a clinging mother. I was very content to see Pen in the arms of others. Who was I to declare myself a glorious mother, knowing best in all things baby? I had never imagined having a child, so had long ago suppressed any inklings of maternal instinct. Not that I was a bad mother. God was good and kind in that regard, and reignited in me that which I had pressed into dormancy.